I was reading the news again. To be precise, I was reading my news feed headlines. Those headlines or clickbait are written to entice you to click on the article. Once you click then two objectives are achieved by the headline writer. First and foremost, the click is registered and counted. Once a certain number of article views are generated then the advertising around that article becomes more desirable, and therefore more expensive. That’s how you generate revenue. The second objective is to create an outside chance the clicker will actually read the rest of the story.
As a result of the desire to lure readers, the headlines are written using as many hot button words as possible and are often misleading or outright bullshit. Words like outraged, slammed, humiliated, alt-right, alt-left, shocked, racist, sexist, abused, appalled, owned, horrified and shamed are the hot buttons I’m referencing. They’re not chosen as headlines to inform. They’re chosen to elicit an emotional response.
Mostly anger and fear though.
In fact, I can scroll through my newsfeed and the headlines alone can piss me off in a matter of minutes. I know what’s happening too but I’m often compelled to read an article just to see if the details are as fucking stupid as the headlines suggests.
In order to determine if the headline is bullshit, you have to read the entire story and not accept the headline by itself as truth. Most people don’t bother though. It takes too long and thinking might be involved, or God forbid, you might be exposed to a researched opinion that you find disagreeable.
What I find distressing about the situation is that people are perfectly comfortable formulating and expressing an opinion without reading the rest of the story. Somehow it’s become a right to be an opinionated ignorant fuck, and there’s no pressure to educate yourself to the little things. Like an opposing opinion or facts.
As a result we’ve devolved to the point where the president of the United States of America isn’t even shamed by his admission that he doesn’t read. But he most certainly has opinions, and shitloads of people don’t see this as a problem.
To be fair, most people including Mr. Trump already have an opinion about damn near everything. Most people aren’t the president though and it seems to me that if you’re the president then you have an obligation to expand your horizons. A strict diet of Fox clickbait doesn’t challenge that opinion so much as provide validation for a prejudice.
Yup, prejudice.
Because if you have a strong opinion regarding the latest political or social issue and at the same time know next to fuck all about that issue, then what you think is an opinion is really a prejudice. Also, if you refuse to even consider a perspective that differs from yours, then it’s the same deal as knowing fuck all. You don’t have an opinion, you have a prejudice.
But somehow Western society has arrived at a point in our evolution where a false equivalency exists between an educated and an uneducated point of view, and both of them are called opinions. That’s how we end up with the flat earth society, anti-vaxxers and an audience for Alex Jones.
It’s dangerous in my opinion to continue to provide a venue for celebration of ignorance, but the trending continues in that direction. I would never have guessed that our appetite for enlightenment would be equalled or surpassed by a desire to be deliberately uninformed.
So, when I hear statements like, “every opinion matters” I have to say that I cringe a bit. I cringe because the statement is correct and yet so very, very wrong.